


Don't Ask, Don't Tell

by feroxargentea



Series: Don't Ask, Don't Tell [1]
Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-16
Updated: 2011-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A discovery on a desert island leads to a dilemma and the dredging-up of old memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Ask, Don't Tell

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Pairing/Characters: Gen. No, seriously.  
> Spoilers: Events up to _HMS Surprise_ , and including characters but not spoilers from mid-series.  
> Disclaimer: The crew of the _Surprise_ belong to the late Patrick O’Brian and are borrowed with love.  
>  Author's Note: Grateful thanks to cj2017 for beta-reading.

 

A tiny lizard, mottled with iridescence and dust, darted across Stephen Maturin’s path and shot into the scrub several feet up the steep bank. He scrambled after it, making a wild futile grab into an unforgiving glaucous shrub which knocked his hat from his head and tore a long rent in his already squalid shirt, a rent with promises of a scolding to come. Of the lizard there was no sign.

He sighed, rolled onto his back, and brightened. Amongst the vicious thorns of the twig hanging just above him sat a single raceme of small bright-orange blooms. Reaching up, he detached the twig from its parent bush, cradling it in his pocket-handkerchief as he examined it. Whorled leaves, obovate, dentate, sessile. Monocarpic, six stamens – _Berberis_ , undoubtedly, from the triple thorns, but no species he had ever seen described. He tucked the specimen carefully into his knapsack, happiness welling up inside him, and took out his notebook and pencil to record place, date, description, until checked by a fresh blood-smear across the words. Having reached absentmindedly for his pocket-handkerchief and frowned to find it gone, he tore a strip of linen from his ruined shirtsleeve, licked the laceration on the back of his hand clean and bound it roughly with the cloth, pulling the knot tight with his teeth until the bleeding stopped.

Treatment concluded, he sat back to consider the likeliest route by which he might return to the shore. His perch above the goat-track commanded an excellent view over fully one-quarter of the small island, but much of the coastline was too sheer to be accessible. A hundred yards further on, however, the faint trail dipped under a wind-stunted pine and began to descend a ravine that might provide a way down to the sea. He followed it, scrambling more quickly as he caught glimpses between the scrubby vegetation of a sandy cove fringed by reefs.

Suddenly he stopped short, his heart hammering strangely. Where the littoral scrub met the strand stood a figure, a human figure, a stranger.

As Stephen gaped, self-possession momentarily lost, the man drew himself a little more upright and raised a shaking hand to his forehead in salute. He opened his mouth, uttered a wordless croak, coughed, and rasped, “Sir, James Kirkwood, sir. Midshipman of the _Wayfarer_.”

Then he staggered, and fell.

 

***

 

“Good day to you, Killick, and where is himself, now?”

“…might as well’ve torn it up for arse-wipes straight off as give it you to wear on your gallivantations, finest cambric never seen the like…”

“I beg your pardon most sincerely for the shirt, but I must see the captain without delay, without the least delay.”

“’E’s gone up the ’ill, ain’t ’e, with ’is spyglass, to check the ’orizon for sails. Now just you…”

“Here, I will leave the shirt with you, Killick.”

“If you’re running after ’im, fetch ’im ’is bread and wine ’e’s gone and forgot, don’t know why I bother. And where’s your bleedin’ ’at? You’ve not gone and lost another – sir! Sir!” he cried at Stephen’s retreating back. “Oh, wasting my fucking breath with them two buggers. What do you think you’re staring at, gapeseed?” This last to the ship’s boy in the tent corner. “You get them bloodstains rinsed out sharpish or you’ll be feeling the back of my ’and.”

Stephen ran after the tall figure picking its way up the steep slope above the camp, and caught up with Jack as he halted near the top, puffing, scarlet-cheeked and streaming with perspiration.

“Why, Stephen, there you are. I trust your expedition was fruitful.”

“Very, I thank you. The barberry – oh, the most perfect specimen of a nondescript barberry, and in full bloom, what joy! But it was not that I came to tell you.” He paused and peered down at the _Surprise_ , at anchor in the natural harbour far below. “Brother, is something amiss with the ship? Is she not – she is missing a mast, is she not?”

“There is no fooling you, Doctor. Yes, whilst we are repairing the topmasts I thought it best to replace the mizzen too with a fresh spar before we reached the Cape, being as one good storm might have seen it sprung. You will find the _Surprise_ looking herself again within a day or two.”

“Then perhaps my mission is mistimed. I came to beg the loan of a couple of stout hands, but I fear they may not be easily spared.”

“You may have Colman and Davies and welcome, if they can be returned by tomorrow. They are of no use in fine-shaping, only to haul on ropes. Brute strength will not be needed until the new topmasts are ready to be swayed up, and Davies is best out of the way of the adzes. Is it a great tortoise you have found?”

“It is not. We have company, Jack. A castaway, a young gentleman who is lame and must be carried.”

“A castaway! Where away?”

“Perhaps two miles along the coast in the northern – the eastern – in the anticlockwise direction, but the only passable route is twice that distance and he cannot walk near so far.”

“You spoke to this man? Who is he?”

“James Kirkwood, a countryman of yours, late of His Majesty’s frigate the _Wayfarer_ , which called here six months ago and left him stranded. He is a midshipman, Jack, more of a boy than a man, not above twenty years of age I should say, with a six-months’ beard as wispy as a clematis seed-head, and he cannot stand without a stick.”

Jack scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Why does he claim to have been left here?”

“He was left for dead. One of the warrant officers was near him and saw him tumble from the cliffs, saw the reef-sharks swarm and thrash around where his hat had fallen, but he had landed on a ledge near the water and lay there stunned until the ship had weighed anchor and was a mile gone. You look grim, my dear. May we not accept his word? There are high cliffs in that direction, with a stratum of harder rock protruding a few feet above the water, very difficult to ascend from – I was trapped on one such stretch myself for a while, until I found a piece of storm-thrown driftwood to clamber up – and truly the sharks gather in amazing numbers. I had meant to warn you of it, to advise that no man steps in water above a foot deep.”

“You ought not to be climbing the cliffs alone, Stephen, promise me that you will not. We cannot spare the men to comb the island for a lost surgeon. Yet we would, and that is my concern – that officers are not so lightly abandoned. If this man did not fall, if he ran, or was marooned, he is not the sort of fellow we would want aboard the _Surprise_.”

“He is unarmed, Jack, half-starved, with a fractured elbow and suppurating wounds in his right foot where he trod unknowing upon a sea-urchin and the spines remain lodged. Whether starvation or blood-poisoning would take him first is hard to say, but I cannot in all conscience leave him here to die.”

Jack hesitated for a moment and then sighed. “No, no, you cannot, and I suppose we have no choice but to take him. Is there access from the sea near where you found him?”

“There is a gap through the reefs into his cove that the smallest of the boats could fit through safely enough, and I might perhaps row there and back in a day, although it would be a long pull around the reefs, but Jack, though indeed I paid great attention to the instruction in surveying and navigating that Dick Richards was so kind as to give me, I am not quite sure that I should recognise the right spot from the water.”

“Bless you, Stephen, I did not mean to send you alone in a boat. Colman and Davies shall take the jolly-boat round, if you will go overland to direct them inshore through the reef. Wave your hat when you see them, or your shirt on a stick; and by the way, forgive me for mentioning it, but you have none, and your breeches are not quite respectable neither.”

Stephen twisted round and peered at his rump, where a large flap of fabric had come adrift and was dangling down his thigh. Overbalancing, he teetered for a moment before Jack grabbed him by the shoulder and waist-band and set him back on level ground.

“Thankee, Jack. I am already on Killick’s defaulters list for the shirt. My hat – oh, that infernal thorn-bush – my hat I can retrieve on my way back, with the blessing. I must be off, joy. May I ask the purser for some slops for Kirkwood? If I am disreputable, he is worse. I shall have him washed and shaved and his clothes burnt before he embarks.”

“You may, and Stephen?”

Stephen turned back to him.

“Do not approach this castaway of yours until the jolly-boat arrives, I beg. Consider that he may be a mutineer or worse. You know the Articles of War, brother; you know what extremes might leave a man stranded. Do not go within pistol-shot.”

 

***

 

The way back to Kirkwood’s cove seemed far shorter the second time, as routes do when they become familiar. Stephen’s hat hung in the thorn-bush, waving slightly in the breeze as if in welcome, and the lad himself was touchingly grateful at his reappearance.

“Doctor Maturin!” he cried when Stephen was barely in earshot. “Sir, I believe I may walk, with my stick, and if you would be so kind as to help me on the steeper parts.”

“There, my dear, do not excite yourself. The captain is sending a boat for us, a small boat. Lie back down here and drink this. How old is the lesion to your arm? I do not like the appearance of it.”

“Six weeks or so – I slipped whilst attempting to climb that cliff for birds’ eggs – but the bones are misaligned and the wound will not heal any more than those on my foot will. My gums have been bleeding too. I have been scraping seaweed from the rocks to stave off the scurvy, but perhaps it was not the right sort.”

“You have some medical knowledge, I collect?”

“My father was a physician, sir. He intended me for his profession, but upon his death my uncle determined on a naval career for me.”

“I see. There is lime-juice in that draught, with steel and bark; pyrexia is the more dangerous in one so gaunt. This was not an auspicious place to be stranded? There are goats, indeed, and perhaps they account for the paucity of indigenous fauna.”

“It was not, sir. I have no weapons but my dirk, and the goats were too fleet for me to catch even before I hurt my foot. I have made the best of a few birds’ eggs, crabs and limpets, but I dare say I am not a pretty sight.”

Stephen examined him dispassionately. Scrubbed, shaved and well-fed, the young man might indeed have been pretty, but his sun-bleached hair was matted and his caerulean eyes were shot through with red.

“Tell me, child, how came you to be stranded here?”

“I was examining the coastline and I slipped…”

“No. Tell me truthfully. I am a doctor, with all that that implies, and you may rely on my confidence where it is needed, but I will not take you aboard upon a lie.”

 

***

 

Stephen awoke late the next morning to the squealing of saws and the din of the forge, echoed distantly by the bustle upon the ship. Across the hospital tent his patient still slept – the dose Kirkwood had been given to calm him as his elbow was re-set and the deeply-buried urchin spines were extracted from the sole of his foot had worked more strongly upon his weakened frame than Stephen had calculated, perhaps added to by the extremity of the lad’s emotions – but the drugged stupor of the small hours had yielded to a natural slumber, and his skin was cool to the touch.

Stephen checked the dressings and nodded in satisfaction. Sticking his head out of the tent, he was immediately accosted by Killick, who handed him a cup of hot coffee with the surly triumph of the infinitely long-suffering.

“Thank you, Killick. Would you know where…”

Killick jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Up there, checking the ’orizon again before we sway up the new mizzen, so we ain’t pounced on unawares with our breeches down, so to speak, sir.”

Stephen stretched, buttoned his shirt – newly patched and only slightly bloodstained from the evening’s operations – and set off up the hill.

 

“Ah, Stephen, you are awake. Your Robinson Crusoe is well?”

“Yes, I thank you; he will not be using his left foot nor his arm for some weeks, but with the blessing he may walk again before we reach England.” He paused. “Tell me now, will you, as a friend, how much do you as captain need to know of his history? And how much do you wish to know? I have no liking for dissimulation, Jack, but I would not betray a man to his ruin, not that I have evidence of criminal action, mark you.”

“Was it mutiny? Or striking a superior officer?”

“No, upon my honour, he has hurt no one.”

“Unnatural acts? If there was no harm done I will not see the wretch hanged, nor even have him put in irons provided you keep him in the sick-berth until we are home, but I will not give passage to a maroon without knowing his crime, nor I think would any captain.”

Stephen sighed. “He arranged for his death to be reported by a man to whom he had formed a close attachment, by the ship’s carpenter in fact.”

“The _carpenter_?”

“A man of greater character than fortune, it would appear. One of the _Wayfarer_ ’s lieutenants, noting this friendship, instead of informing the captain or turning a blind eye as many men might, turned blackmailer, threatening to report them both unless he was given that which a superior officer ought not to ask of a midshipman.”

“You mean…”

“Exactly. Kirkwood, being unwilling to submit, saved his friend’s neck from the noose by running at the first opportunity, there being no evidence, no case at all, without his presence. He hoped to meet with a whaler within a few months and to work his passage back to Europe. He had expected coconut palms, date palms, breadfruit trees it seems, not this desert scrub. So there is the matter, Jack. I believe he told the truth in this.”

“And this lieutenant may not be accused, I suppose.”

“To compel Kirkwood to testify against him would be to endanger his own life, as you will readily perceive.”

“Well then, there is nothing to be done, it seems, except to give him passage. But you will be responsible for him, Stephen. I hope he may not betray your trust.”

“Thank you, Jack. Thank you.” Stephen stuck out his hand awkwardly, and Jack grasped it and shook it, patting him on the shoulder with his other hand.

“There, now, may we always agree so well. I must be off before Mr Lamb tears out the last of his grey hairs. You will be in the hospital tent?”

“I will.”

 

Stephen returned to the tent to find his patient struggling to sit upright.

“You will oblige me by lying still, Mr Kirkwood,” he cried testily. “There, there is an extra pillow for you, and a sling for your arm. I could not set it in plaster in the new fashion, the skin being broken, so it must remain splinted. Now eat up this broth, so. It may make you somewhat sleepy.”

“But sir, if I might ask – did the captain inquire…? Did you…”

“I told him that you had left the _Wayfarer_ under necessity, that there had been a friendship misjudged, along with jealousy and persecution by your superior officer.”

“You did not mention Jacob?”

“I did. The captain is an honourable man, honourable by his lights and by my own. He might trace the carpenter of the _Wayfarer_ , but he will not; in that you may trust.”

“Then…”

“Then? Then, you will be given passage back to England, during which you will confine yourself to the sick-bay, and in Plymouth you will leave the ship and the Navy for good. You cannot return to your uncle, I suppose?”

“He died three years ago, but my aunt might receive me, I think she might. And Jacob – Jacob was to go to London; he said a joiner might always find work there. Oh I know what you must think, but he is a good man. He tried to persuade me to let him take my place, but I was stouter and younger, and I thought I might live here well enough until the next ship arrived. I meant to give a false name, you see, but when I saw you I could not. I am weak, I am weak.”

“Finish the broth, now. When we reach England, I will give you a letter of introduction to a gentleman of my acquaintance in London. You may not find the employment he can offer congenial, but it would be preferable to walking the streets around Seven Dials, and he is a kindly man who will find your Jacob Harris for you, if he is to be found at all. Do not weep, child, you are over-tired, that is all. Lay your head back on the pillow. There, give me the spoon. There, honey, sleep. Sleep.”

He caught the bowl as it fell from Kirkwood’s hand, wiped the young man’s mouth clean and pulled the sheet up to his chin. Then he took up a book, set a chair by the tent’s entrance and sat there for the rest of the morning, staring sightlessly out to sea.

 

***

 

Two weeks later as the _Surprise_ glided eastwards at a bare two knots in the gentlest of breezes, Stephen joined Jack on his morning constitutional to the furthest of the boats, which were towing behind the ship to save their seams opening in the heat. He had hauled himself into the skiff and was already sprawled lengthways on the thwart, arms along the gunwales, hair drying into hedgehog spikes, when Jack finished his third circuit and climbed into the skiff’s bow.

“There you are, Stephen. A capital hour for swimming, is it not? Tell me, how does your patient come along?”

“Kirkwood? Creditably, creditably. The fracture to his arm is knitting well and the skin is all but healed. Padeen has had to threaten to lash him into his hammock to keep him from limping around, attempting to be of assistance. He could not be a more grateful patient; I like him very well. And he is not without medical knowledge, sound if basic medical knowledge, gleaned from his father.”

“You might have kept him as a sick-berth attendant if it was not for – but of course it would be best if he left the ship’s company when we reach home.”

“He is of an age with Blakeney, and has had much the same education. One might suppose it a waste that two such promising young men cannot both take the examination for lieutenant,” observed Stephen drily.

“Certificates of time served made out in the name of a dead man count for nothing, Stephen, and he will not wish to advertise his resurrection to the Admiralty I am sure, though they have little enough incentive to chase after a midshipman when there is such a surplus of the little brutes.”

“I do not ask you to keep him on your quarterdeck, Jack. His history is too well known, or I should say too well guessed at, amongst our shipmates.”

“It would not do, you must know it would not do, and it would not look well neither. It is enough that we have given him passage, that you have sat with him night and day, spent a great deal of time… I mean no reflection on your character, of course, but I sometimes fear you give insufficient thought to the appearance of things, to your reputation.”

Stephen laughed. “A whited sepulchre, my dear, but you do impugn my common sense. A little eccentric philanthropy may be forgiven a medical man, may it not? You need not fear; he will leave the ship the moment we dock in Plymouth.”

“He has relatives to go to, I think you said?”

“A widowed aunt in London had a fondness for him and may be pleased to find him alive, and there is, or may be, the carpenter, if there is still fidelity in the world. If both of those fail, a young man might still make his way in the city, a handsome young man especially.”

“Well,” replied Jack peaceably, “I hope he may do well. I mean, I hope he may be happy.”

Stephen closed his eyes, the trace of contained anger fading from his expression, and rested his head back on the gunwale. Jack watched him splayed across the warm planks, soaking up the heat with the avid abandon of a cat by a hearth-fire, and wondered uneasily and not for the first time how much of Stephen’s knowledge was first-hand. Men had been kind to him, he had said, in his student days in Dublin and Paris; and in his Indian fever he had said more, unspeakable things, but whether memories or fantasies or nightmares Jack could not tell. Stephen’s charge, the man whose death had stranded him in Mahon all those years ago, might perhaps have been more than a patient, for who would travel with a single servant and yet take a personal physician? The man’s family had certainly been reluctant to meet the doctor’s fees. And what had Stephen expected to provide in return for bed and board on the _Sophie_? Had he been surprised to discover it was merely his medical expertise? And had he… but it was an absurd notion, and Jack shook his head, the half-formed questions dissolving in the sunshine. It did not, after all, matter what Stephen had done or thought. He was there, unbroken, and asking nothing.

Jack slapped his hands on the gunwales to waken him. “Race you to the ship,” he cried, as merrily as the boy he had once been, and tumbled into the water with barely a splash.

Stephen peeled himself reluctantly from the sun-soaked thwart and followed, paddling slowly and jerkily past the jolly-boat, launch and cutters in Jack’s wake. By the time he was halfway to the ship, Jack was already clinging to the man-ropes, twisting water from his hair in bright streams and sparkling droplets. Stephen wondered anew how stripping silvery liquid from a sodden brown mess could leave it golden. Perhaps Dick Richards’ mathematics could explain the phenomenon?

As he peered up, pondering, a wave caught him in the face, and when he had resurfaced and finished spluttering, coughing and spitting out the sharpness, Jack was perched at the break of the tumblehome, reaching down with one massive scarred arm to haul him up the ship’s side.

Stephen regarded him for a moment – a man so much at home in his world – and then reached up and took his hand.


End file.
